Germany looks for nuclear waste depot site
The German government seeks to find a depot site for the radioactive waste from its nuclear power plants ahead of the country’s upcoming elections, a new report says.
According to Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, Berlin is looking for a suitable underground site to store nuclear waste before the parliamentary elections which are scheduled for September.
Berlin has been in talks with leaders of the opposition, the Greens and the Social Democrats (SPD), in order to reach to an agreement over the nuclear waste repository.
The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to phase out atomic power by 2022 while increasing solar, wind and other renewable energies. The decision came after Japan’s Fukushima disaster occurred in 2011.
However, finding a suitable place for storing the nuclear waste has remained a big challenge for the government.
A temporary depot site at Gorleben in the state of Lower Saxony has drawn demonstrations since the 1980s as people tried to block nuclear waste transports and clashed with police.
The country’s opposition parties have been against using a salt dome formation below Gorleben as the permanent site to store the waste.
According to a global treaty agreed in 1993, the countries are not allowed to dump radioactive and industrial waste at sea.
The Greenpeace, a nongovernmental environmental organization, says that more than 100,000 tons of nuclear waste have been dumped at European seas that will have long-term effects on the environment.
